From the moment front-runner Tammy Curry (Brooke Bushman) is blown to
pieces on her sabotaged tractor, it's clear this beauty pageant will be
fought tooth and nail. And it ain't gonna be pretty.

In the small Midwest community of Mount Rose, Minnesota, the Sarah Rose
Miss Teen Princess contest is into the final furlong. But for all the
sugar-coated spoutings of world peace and harmony hairspray, it's a
question of victory by any means necessary - as a roving documentary
film crew discovers.

Casting wise it's spot on, as Alley launches with smiley, viper
spitefulness into a beacon of single-minded hypocrisy, and is well
matched by Richards, even if she looks the least convincing high school
teenager since Stockard Channing's Rizzo enrolled in Rydell High. Dunst
meanwhile blossoms into a very accomplished actress, and - together
with Barkin and Janney - claims most of the prize lines.

If there's a weakness it's that the mockumentary approach doesn't
always work, and the film drags on a little too long after a seemingly
natural conclusion. Still, the dark laughs are consistent, and the
parody of middle America's bizarre beauty contest fixation is spiked
with some jolting shock tactics - from the nurse-assisted wheelchair
dance by the reigning anorexic crown holder to Richards' hilarious (not
to mention blasphemous) love song for Jesus - but such blackness never
obstructs rooting for Dunst's likable teen. An outrageous, deliciously
bad-taste classic.

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